In the past, marketers have stressed the importance of brand visibility. The argument has been that having your brand visible in all the right places is important, even without interaction with customers. Unfortunately, living in a world where consumers see and hear an average of 3000 marketing messages a day, there is simply too much clutter out there to stand out from the crowd.

From preparing yourself in the morning and driving to work, to most activities throughout the day, your brain relies on fast and efficient automatic behaviours to minimise the effort of having to consciously weigh-up every decision that is encountered on a repetitive basis. How entrenched is your product in your consumer's habitual repertoire?

Companies hoping to piggyback on next year's Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) to score free advertising could face criminal prosecution. Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has indicated his intention to designate the Afcon 2013 a "protected event" in terms of South Africa's ambush marketing legislation. This will ensure stringent advertising laws are enforced similar to those used during the 2010 Fifa World Cup.

A few years ago brands were getting their heads around SEO and social media. Now content marketing has made it into the digital landscape and many are asking where SEO and social media fit into the picture.

Crowdinvest, the country's first ever crowd-sourced investment platform, looks set to revolutionise South Africa's economic landscape by breaking down investment barriers for a broad segment of the population.

Brand journalism has become the buzzword in the marketing and PR profession. As the digital space takes over and marketing and PR campaigns gear themselves towards "engaging" with their customers, brand journalism is two words on everyone's lips. But what is it?

There is a well-known creative condition called "analysis paralysis". Fuelled by our incessant hunger for information and meaning, we have created a society too focused on the thinking and less so on the doing, overanalysing ourselves into a full stop. And the only way to move passed the stupefying white page staring back at you is to practice the art of Unthink.

The new TVC for DStv, part of the integrated campaign executed by Ogilvy & Mather Johannesburg, introduces Javas, a sage adviser shipwrecked on a remote island who conjures up an answer to every possible problem. He graciously invites his fellow islanders to sip from the fountain of his wisdom. (video)

Boomtown Strategic Brand Agency has achieved its second award in a week. Following its CLIO award, the agency won an Assegai for its Dream Starter campaign for Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU).

We all know the term 'less is more', but in a busy and complex world it is often forgotten. For a brand to say more and have optimal impact it needs to say less, less grey, less of the same, and more difference, more relevance. Simple doesn't mean easy though, and that's where the craft comes in. The craft of simplification.

In a passage borrowed from Columbia Business School professor, Sheen Inyengar's book, The Art of Choosing, she makes her point that although everyone believes they are unique, we are actually more alike than we think. Barnum Effect statements like this are often used by mentalists, fortune tellers and clairvoyants to make "accurate" predictions about their subjects. And I've seen them used in marketing research.

In a highly-connected world where social media savvy-consumers expect greater transparency from the companies whose brands they use, the absence of shared values is becoming an imposing threat to companies' triple bottom lines*.

In an episode of season 5 of The Simpsons cartoon, the townsfolk of Springfield decided to legalise gambling in order to boost the town's flagging coffers. Marge, the mom, develops a gambling addiction after putting a loose coin in a slot machine. She becomes permanently glued to the machines, feeding in coins in a zombie-like fashion and consequently neglecting her family, who proceed to stir up all sorts of unconstrained mayhem.

Hiring Bounty, which makes use of crowdsourcing as a recruitment tool, and Idea Bounty, which solves business problems by tapping into the creativity of the masses, are working together to find the best and most creative idea to drive traffic to the recruitment site.

Email is still one of the most important and widely-used communication channels that marketers have at their disposal, but the way that many organisations use it is still surprisingly unrefined. Nowhere is this clearer than in the lack of attention many marketers pay to the mobile device as a channel for email marketing.

5FM has announced that Natalie Frank has been appointed as the station's new marketing manager which will see her developing and implementing the marketing and CSI strategy for 5FM and for promoting the station, its programming and events.

Tasked with developing an insightful, relevant marketing campaign that would connect with the festival's target audience, 34Woman used the classic knock-knock joke (or klop-klop grap, in Afrikaans) to give this year's Aardklop festival more gees.

The Irish-based Digital Marketing Institute announced a new partnership with Vega School of Brand Leadership to train over 3000 students in digital marketing in South Africa next year. The Institute forecasts that the South African market will generate revenues in excess of €3 million for the company by 2015.

Leading market research firm Millward Brown has officially opened its newest office in Cairo, Egypt to serve the North Africa market. This is the third office opened by the global firm in the Africa and Middle East region this year.

You have a fantastic product or service. You have invested valuable resources into creating or acquiring an up-to-date, accurate and extensive database of prospective leads and clients for your company. So why aren't you seeing any results in terms of return on investment and sales?

Recently launched by Liveoutloud at one of its events in the Sandton Audi Centre, the new Playoutloud App contains a cache of luxury goods worth over R5.7m and offers a competitive format to an exclusive subscriber base, which is limited to 500 members.

In celebration of Heineken's 15-year association with the James Bond franchise and, in anticipation of the launch of Skyfall at the end of November 2102, the company has launched its international 'Crack the Case' campaign in South Africa. (video)